The first episode of Radio Cardiff's new soap, Sophia
Square, is crisp, professional, and so well-assembled you might be forgiven
for thinking the cast and crew hadn't been at this for years already. The
strongest selling point of the new soap is its no-frills, character-driven
presentation of everyday people from many cultural backgrounds set in a
fictional square in Cardiff. It's a Cardiff where Delroy (Leon Charles)
and Josh (Richard Shannon), voices issuing from the Casablanca Cafe, are as
integral to the life of the Square as Sian (Jenny Ashton) and Mary (Georgina
Sammut). Already the stage is set for conflict, and future episodes of Sophia
Square will no doubt be as eventful as anything to be heard on The
Archers.
Sophia Square is
the morphed version of the hip and funny Lovely Jubilee, both
masterminded by Alison Plant and produced by Rhys Phillips for Radio
Cardiff. Sophia Square does two
things that Lovely Jubilee didn’t:
it introduces more characters and more potential conflict, and it
actively seeks to include Cardiff’s Tiger Bay’s multicultural heritage. From these seeds, I think we’re going to hear
some smashing radio drama.
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